Womens
WORLD has been networking in Africa since 1996. In 1999, we established
partnership projects with Femrite
in Uganda, Mbaasem in Ghana, and WEAVE
in South Africa. We are posting some writing by members of Femrite
and WEAVE, both groups of Black women writers who have formed publication
ventures. We are also posting a few recent essays by African feminists
Gertrude Fester and Patricia McFadden,and an interview with Amina
Mama, as a first attempt to make their important work more widely
available to the global womens movement.

Women's WORLD has been networking in
Africa since 1996. In 1999, a delegation to the Zimbabwe International
Book Fair held two brainstorming dinners with a diverse group of
African women writers, who identified the following as obstacles
to their creative expression:

General social problems, particularly structural adjustment,
AIDS, and war, which close up the space available to women writers

Informal censorship of women activists, found in traditional
social attitudes towards women, often reinforced by governments,
the media, and the growth of various fundamentalisms, with illiteracy
acting as another kind of silencing

Specific barriers experienced by women writers, who suffer from
lack of resources, training, and access to publishing opportunities,
as well as discrimination by male publishers and critics

Co-optation of the women's movement by governments and the
establishment, so that the women's movement itself encourages
censorship and betrays progressive women

Participants felt that their concerns as writers
could not be isolated from other social problems, and that an African
women writers' network must deal with all these issues. In the course
of discussing programmatic ideas, they identified four main needs:

A different kind of women's movement, that includes poor, young,
and rural women, and promotes a vision of development that supports
cultural change

More women cultural activists, including publishers, who can
develop new markets for women's writing, and feminist critics,
who can support new writers

A network of African women writers' groups, with groups that
already exist helping the new ones

An emergency action network through which African women writers
can defend one another within the continent, to avoid situations
in which human rights concerns are labeled "Western."